Thursday, January 23, 2003

 
I'm on library time, which means that I should have returned books yesterday. I'm starting to write notes on books I either haven't read or don't plan to finish. I'm also starting to write three-sentence reviews, simply because I just wrote on these books and am tired of having to rewrite my notes.

Luis H. Francia's Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago: Skilled, detailed writing combining personal homecoming to the Philippines with Filipino political and cultural history. Too skilled, too detailed. Next.

Another personal memoir, Peter Balakian's Black Dog of Fate: An American son Uncovers his Armenian Past. Were it not for my interest in the personal experience of historical trauma, I would not have made it page 131 of 289. The writing is good, but I'm simply not interested in a boy growing up in suburban New Jersey during the 1950s and 1960s.

One note only: Balakian's grandmother tells a story about Fate (8-10), in which she welcomes a poor woman's offering of a dead, black dog after rejecting a rich woman's young spring lamb stuffed with goodies. In her words, the dog gives us hope, mystery.

Adrienne Rich's The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977 makes me want a partner worth writing love poems for. Steady writing about sustaining love through the days rather than the typical lyrical exhiliration about falling in love. I read every single word in this book.

Roland Barthes' chronological interviews in The Grain of the Voice makes clear to me why I love/hate him so. I can barely open my eyes during the first few interviews and can't contain my pleasures during the last few. This is the difference I feel for The Fashion System (yuck!) and Camera Lucida (yum!). More Barthes to come.

Penny Van Esterik's Materializing Thailand analyzes Thai material culture through a gender-oriented approach, focusing on shopping malls, beauty pageants, and female/male relations. I support her work, but the notes stop here.

F.N. David's Games, Gods, and Gambling: A History of Probability and Statistical Ideas raises questions about the cultural context in which ideas of the probable developed--fate v. chance, divination v. randomness. Promising, esp. as this book is on hold for someone else.

Philip Taylor's Fragments of the present: searching for modernity in Vietnam's South will be found again and finished. Notes will appear then.

Edited to say: So this method of reading until I get bored sometimes isn't fair. While flipping through Black Dog of Fate's last pages to see if I left any bookmarks in there before dropping it into the library return slot, I see reproductions of government documents and such that stop at complete autobiographical and start at social history. Perhaps there are more gems in there, if only I can slop through Balakian's subjective impressions.
posted by Open Mouth 4:07 PM

 
Arg. When will I learn to use blog technology!? Just spent an hour logging my notes to six books, only to have it all disappear.
posted by Open Mouth 3:44 PM